President Donald Trump is on a list of witnesses for trial in a Palm Beach lawsuit that pits billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein against a Fort Lauderdale attorney who represents Epstein’s victims.

The case appears bound for trial this summer following a Feb. 9 ruling by the Florida Supreme Court in another case that has allowed Fort Lauderdale lawyer Bradley Edwards’ claim of malicious prosecution against Epstein to proceed.

President Trump “has been identified as an individual who may have information relating to these allegations,” said Edwards’ West Palm Beach attorney Jack Scarola, who placed Trump’s name on a witness list on Aug. 31. “But it’s unlikely that he would ever be called” to appear at trial, especially now that he’s assumed the presidency.

Scarola said Trump is one of a number of high-profile individuals whose testimony might be relevant because they “had a relationship with Epstein that would have at least exposed them potentially to what was going on inside Epstein’s Palm Beach home … during the relevant period of time” between 2001-2007.

What was going on in Epstein’s mansion, court papers say, was an ugly child molestation scheme involving sex with “substantially more” than 40 girls, some as young as 12. A “statement of undisputed facts” filed by Scarola says Epstein used his staff and his victims to recruit more victims, employing “a pyramid abuse scheme in which he paid underage victims $200-$300 cash for each other underage victim that she brought to him.”

“There is no evidence the President was involved in Epstein’s schemes,” Scarola said.

Secretary of Labor nominee Alex Acosta

Still, the spectacle of a U.S. president being drawn into sordid litigation involving a notorious politically connected sexual criminal who got an apparent sweetheart deal from then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, now Trump’s nominee to become U.S. Secretary of Labor, represents a potential political nightmare for the White House.

The White House press office did not respond to requests for comment.

Epstein’s attorney, Tonja Haddad Coleman, declined to comment.

An affidavit about Trump

A little-noticed affidavit by Edwards recounting his knowledge of Trump’s involvement with Epstein is recounted further below in this story.

Investment banker Epstein, represented by a team of high-powered lawyers, pleaded guilty June 30, 2008 in Palm Beach Circuit Court to two felonies: procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and offering to commit prostitution. He served 13 months of an 18-month sentence. The Palm Beach Daily News has reported Epstein served his time in “a vacant wing at the Palm Beach County Stockade with liberal work-release privileges.”

In exchange for his plea, U.S. Attorney Acosta agreed not prosecute Epstein or his employees on federal charges contained in a 53-page indictment. A 2007 federal non-prosecution agreement with Epstein states, among other things, that he “knowingly and willfully” conspired with others to use interstate commerce to “persuade, induce, or entice minor females to engage in prostitution.”

If convicted of that charge, and others cited in the agreement, Epstein faced possible prison for life.

Republican Acosta, dean of Florida International University’s Law School and chairman of U.S. Century Bank, is expected to be asked about his treatment of Epstein at his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday.

In addition to the malicious prosecution claim against Epstein, attorney Edwards is also suing the government on behalf of “Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2” and others under the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA). The lawsuit, filed in 2008, alleges the U.S. Attorney’s Office under Acosta violated the rights of Epstein’s victims by, among other things, “conspiring” with Epstein to keep them “in the dark’’ so the plea arrangement could be done without the victims “raising any objection.”

Wifredo Ferrer, who stepped down as Miami U.S. Attorney earlier this month

In February 2016, Edwards and co-counsel Paul Cassell filed a still-pending motion for summary judgment that says Acosta’s successor, Wifredo Ferrer, “has continued to fight” victims’ efforts “to have the court declare that their rights were violated.” The motion asks U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra to rule that the government violated the victims’ rights and explore possible remedies. Ferrer stepped down March 3.

Addressing a “terrible injustice”

“Both Brad and Professor Cassell undertook and have continued to prosecute the CVRA claim to address what they perceive to be a terrible injustice,” said Scarola. “There is no claim for money damages and there is no prevailing party provision in the CVRA” that would allow them to collect legal fees for their work on the case.

Attorney Edwards began representing several of Epstein’s victims while maintaining a solo law practice in 2008, settling a number of claims for undisclosed amounts two years later.

For eight months in 2009, however, he worked for Rothstein, Rosenfeldt and Adler, the law firm that spectacularly imploded in scandal in November of that year when it was discovered that founder Scott Rothstein was running a giant Ponzi scheme. Rothstein, now in prison, enticed investors by falsely claiming that they could buy into lucrative pending settlements in whistleblower, sexual harassment and other cases.

Edwards’ court papers say he knew nothing of Rothstein’s schemes, and federal authorities later determined Edwards to have been one of Rothstein’s victims. In 2009, however, Epstein sued Rothstein, Edwards and one of Edwards’ clients alleging, among other things, civil racketeering. Edwards’ court response: the suit was filed “for the sole purpose of attempting to intimidate” him and his client.

Epstein later dropped all his allegations, and Edwards since has turned the case back against him with his counterclaim of malicious prosecution. The case was on hold for two years pending last month’s Florida Supreme Court ruling, which reversed a lower court decision that dismissed the accusation on technical grounds.

Edwards won’t discuss either case. But in a little-noticed 2010 affidavit, given a year after the case was filed, Edwards explained why he thought Trump and other notables involved with Epstein, including former President Bill Clinton, might have relevant information to provide.

Does Trump have knowledge of Epstein’s crimes?

In his affidavit, Edwards suggests Trump has personal knowledge of Epstein’s criminality.

“I learned through a source that Trump banned Epstein from his Maralago [Mar-A- Lago] Club in West Palm Beach because Epstein sexually assaulted an underage girl at the club,” Edwards stated.

The affidavit notes that Trump visited Epstein at Epstein’s West Palm Beach home – “the same home where Epstein abused minor girls daily.”

Fort Lauderdale attorney Bradley Edwards

A “review of message pads confiscated from Epstein’s home” showed “that Trump called Epstein’s West Palm Beach mansion on several occasions during the time period relevant to my client’s complaints,” the affidavit says. Likewise “Epstein’s phone directory from his computer contains 14 phone numbers for Donald Trump, including emergency numbers, car numbers, and numbers to Trump’s security guard and houseman.”

The affidavit goes on to say that one of Epstein’s victims “Jane Doe #102” has alleged that she was initially approached at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago by Ghislaine Maxwell and recruited to be Maxwell and Epstein’s “underage sex slave.”

Maxwell, daughter of the late British publishing baron Robert Maxwell, is named in the affidavit as an Epstein associate of interest. She is described in court papers as Epstein’s “longtime companion” who helped run his companies and “recruit underage children” for the pleasure of both Epstein and herself. The affidavit says she attended the wedding of Chelsea Clinton, Bill and Hillary Clinton’s daughter, in July 2010.

The affidavit goes on to cite the 2009 deposition of Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, who “testified that Trump flew on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane with him (the same plane that Jane Doe 102 alleged was used to have sex with underage girls).”

Likewise, attorney Edwards cited in his affidavit a 2002 New York Magazine article about Epstein titled, “Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery.”

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” said Trump, then a prominent, wealthy New York developer. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

The subtitle of the article about Epstein: “He’s pals with a passel of Nobel Prize-winning scientists, CEOs like Leslie Wexner of the Limited, socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, even Donald Trump. But it wasn’t until he flew Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey, and Chris Tucker to Africa on his private Boeing 727 that the world began to wonder who he is.”

A second U.S. president

While ex-President Clinton is not on the witness list for trial, Edwards listed a number of reasons in his affidavit to believe that Clinton might have relevant information about Epstein. They include:

· Clinton’s highly publicized travel with Epstein and Maxwell aboard Epstein’s private plane to Africa. Flight logs for “the relevant years 2002-2005 showed Clinton traveling on Epstein’s plane on more than 10 occasions and his assistant, Doug Band, traveled on many more occasions.” The logs also showed Clinton traveled with other “employees and/or co-conspirators of Epstein’s that were closely connected to Epstein’s child exploitation and sexual abuse.”

· “Jane Doe No. 102 stated generally that she was required by Epstein to be exploited not only by Epstein but also Epstein’s ‘adult male peers, including royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen and/or other professional and personal acquaintances’ – categories Clinton and acquaintances of Clinton fall into.”

Ex-President Bill Clinton

· “Clinton frequently flew with Epstein aboard his plane, then suddenly stopped – raising the suspicion that the friendship abruptly ended, perhaps because of events related to Epstein’s sexual abuse of children.”

Attorney Scarola would not say why Clinton is not on the Aug. 31 witness list, stating he is “not at liberty to discuss our litigation strategy.”

Edwards initially sought to depose Trump and Clinton about Epstein, but never did. Scarola said there was no need to depose them after Epstein dropped his racketeering and other claims against Edwards.

While there are other notables on the witness list of those with knowledge of Epstein, including retired Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz and illusionist David Copperfield, there’s only one other politician. That’s ex-New Mexico Governor and Clinton Administration Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson.

The affidavit says Epstein’s personal pilot, Larry Morrison, testified in a 2009 deposition about “Richardson joining Epstein at Epstein’s New Mexico ranch” and that “there was information that Epstein had young girls at his ranch which, given the circumstances of the case, raised the reasonable inference he was sexually abusing these girls since he had regularly and frequently abused girls in West Palm Beach and elsewhere.

“Richardson had also returned campaign donations that were given to him by Epstein, indicating that he believed that there was something about Epstein that he did not want to be associated with,” the affidavit says.

The 28 pages originally were censored from the 2003 report of Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11.

It took 13 1/2 years and enormous public and political pressure to force President Obama to order today’s release of the suppressed chapter from Congress’s Joint Inquiry report about apparent Saudi support for the 9/11 suicide hijackers.

The pages, however, were not released in full. Nearly every page is speckled with black marks where information was redacted. In some cases, those deletions are of entire paragraphs, almost certainly meaning that controversy about the 28 pages will continue.

Those 28 pages, however, aren’t nearly the last word about the people and events behind 9/11. Tens of thousands, likely hundreds of thousands, of additional U.S. government investigative documents about the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks remain classified.

“I hope the 28 pages are the cork in the bottle and that all that other material will now be released,” said former Florida Sen. Bob Graham. Graham co-chaired the Joint Inquiry and has long advocated for the public release of the chapter that was withheld from publication at the direction of President George W. Bush.

The declassification process that led to today’s release of the 28 pages was first sought three years ago by the Florida Bulldog and 9/11 authors Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, represented by Miami attorney Thomas Julin. The Joint Inquiry’s 838-page report described the hidden chapter as being about “specific sources of foreign sources of support” for the hijackers while they were in the U.S.

In September 2014, in response to criticism that President Obama had failed to keep his promise to 9/11 family members that he would release the 28 pages, the White House announced that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was “coordinating the required interagency review” of the 28 pages for possible declassification.

The declassification review, however, did not include a review of numerous other secret government documents about 9/11 generated by the FBI, CIA, Treasury and State departments and the National Security Agency – or even the 9/11 Commission itself.

The FBI alone has acknowledged that a single field office in Tampa holds 80,000 classified pages about 9/11. Those records are being reviewed for possible public release by the presiding federal judge in a Fort Lauderdale Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Florida Bulldog’s corporate parent in 2012.

The suit seeks the release of FBI files about its investigation of a Sarasota Saudi family with apparent ties to the hijackers who abruptly moved out of their home and returned to Saudi Arabia two weeks before 9/11 – leaving behind their cars, clothes, furniture and other possessions.

Last month, 19 survivors and relatives of those who died on Sept. 11th sent a letter to President Obama asking him to designate for “prompt declassification” nine categories of documents “relevant to responsibility for the events of 9/11.”

“We hope and trust that you regard the release of the 28 pages as only a first step in responding to the public calls for transparency and accountability,” the letter says.

The records requested for declassification are:

Documents about the involvement of government-sponsored Saudi religious institutions in supporting al Qaeda. The letter identified 10 organizations that should be subject to declassification review, including the Muslim World League, Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia & Herzegovina, the Saudi Red Crescent Society and Al Haramain Islamic Foundation.

Documents concerning further investigations of the transactions, relationships and issues discussed in the 28 pages.

Unreleased records of the 9/11 Commission. In 2004, the Commission had urged that all of its records, to the greatest extent possible, be made publicly available by January 2009. “More than seven years after that target date, the bulk of the Commission’s records have not been processed for declassification at all, and the limited records that have been released are in many cases so heavily-redacted as to be of little use to the American public,” the letter says.

Documents relating to the activities, interactions, relationships, contacts and financial transactions of the 9/11 hijackers in Florida and other areas of the United States.

Records relating to Saudi Arabia’s “efforts to promote Wahhabi Islam” and the “relationship between those efforts and terrorist activity, fundraising and recruitment.” Those records are “especially pertinent” because employees of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs in the Saudi Embassy and in consulates “were implicated as possibly having provided support to the 9/11 hijackers.” Also, records about “as many as 70” Saudi diplomats associated with Islamic Affairs whose credentials were revoked in the aftermath of 9/11.

Records about other investigations of al Qaeda attacks and operations. The letter seeks the “long overdue” release of records involving the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in Pakistan, the attack on the USS Cole, the 1998 African embassy bombings, the Bojinka plot and numerous other incidents.

The victims and relatives, who for years have attempted to sue Saudi Arabia for damages, expressed concern in their letter that the Obama Administration’s public response to calls for transparency “have focused narrowly on the 28 pages alone.”

“Any meaningful effort to provide the American public with the truth concerning Saudi Arabia’s role in the emergence of al Qaeda and the events of 9/11 must encompass the full spectrum of evidence bearing on questions of Saudi culpability, not merely the 28 pages,” the letter says.

“By all public accounts, the 28 pages focus on a very discrete set of relationships and transactions relating to Saudi support for two of the 9/11 hijackers once they were already in the United States,” the letter goes on. “While this evidence is critically important, the broader issue, and the one principally raised by our lawsuit against the Kingdom, is the extent of Saudi Arabia’s funding and patronage of al Qaeda, and role in spreading the jihadist ideology that gave rise to bin Laden’s organization during the decade leading up to the attacks.”

Efforts to obtain access to other, still-secret 9/11 information are underway. For example, the Florida Bulldog has a number of outstanding Freedom of Information requests that seek FBI and terrorism task force records about the activities of the suicide hijackers in South Florida, northern Virginia and northern New Jersey.

More recent federal documents that may shed light on 9/11 are also being sought for public disclosure.

On June 16, Florida Bulldog’s parent, Broward Bulldog Inc., sued the FBI and the Department of Justice under the Freedom of Information Act seeking records by and about the FBI’s 9/11 Review Commission.

The Review Commission was established a decade after the 9/11 Commission to conduct an “external review” of the FBI’s performance in implementing the original commission’s recommendations and to assess new evidence. It held no public hearings and released no transcripts or documents to explain the conclusions in its March 2015 report. The commission’s members and executive director were paid by the FBI in still-secret personal services contracts.

The lawsuit seeks to obtain those records to assess the basis for reliability of the Review Commission’s findings and recommendations, notably its conclusions about a remarkable April 16, 2002 FBI report. That report, released by the FBI after the initial lawsuit was filed, reported that agents found “many connections” between the Sarasota Saudis and “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.”

The FBI report corroborated witness statements that were the basis for a Sept. 8, 2011 story in the Florida Bulldog that first reported the story of the Sarasota Saudis, including the existence of the FBI’s investigation and the fact that the FBI never disclosed it to Congress. It was also a major embarrassment for the Bureau, flatly contradicting the FBI’s public statements that agents had found no connections between the family and the 9/11 plot.

The Review Commission concluded that the FBI report was “unsubstantiated” based on statements by unidentified FBI officials calling the report “poorly written and inaccurate.” The Commission, however, interviewed none of the independent witnesses whose accounts were corroborated by the FBI report, and did not examine why the FBI kept its Sarasota investigation secret for a decade.

On Monday, former CIA director Porter Goss strongly disagreed with current CIA chief John Brennan’s assertions on Meet the Press as to why President Obama should keep secret 28 classified pages from a 14-year-old congressional report about 9/11 said to implicate the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the terrorist attacks.

“I favor full declassification of the 28 pages unless there is a national security reason not to,” Goss told FloridaBulldog.org. “If there is such a reason, I feel the Administration should tell us specifically what it is. I will not settle for generalities about ‘offending allies.’ ”

Brennan, who has been CIA director since 2013, told TV interviewer Chuck Todd Sunday the top secret 28 pages contain information that was “thoroughly investigated” and in some cases found to be inaccurate by the subsequent 9/11 Commission and last year’s lesser-known 9/11 Review Commission.

“I think some people may seize upon that uncorroborated, unvetted information that was in there that was basically just a collation of this information that came out of FBI files and point to Saudi involvement which I think would be very, very inaccurate,” Brennan said.

The Obama Administration’s Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, which includes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is reviewing the hidden chapter in the 838-page congressional report about “specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States.”

The review process for the 28 pages has been underway since June 2013 when the Florida Bulldog’s parent, Broward Bulldog Inc., invoked what’s known as the Mandatory Declassification Review process. James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, told reporters last week that an “interagency position on the declassification of the 28 pages” is ongoing and that a decision on whether to release the 28 pages was likely by June.

Goss, who helped write the 28 pages, believes the government will act soon, yet will continue to withhold some information they contain from the public.

“My guess is that some of the 28-page material will be released soon, but some bits will still be redacted. Thus the speculation will continue. I think this will all be settled about the same time everyone agrees about the Kennedy assassination,” Goss said.

Goss, the CIA director from 2004 to 2006, was a veteran Republican congressman from Southwest Florida and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence when in 2002 he was tapped to help lead Congress’s Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. His co-chairman was Florida Sen. Bob Graham, the Democrat who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Rebuffed by the FBI director

Graham has been a leading figure in calling publicly for the release of the 28 pages. In a recent 60 Minutes report, Goss told how Graham and he met with then-FBI Director Robert Mueller before the Joint Inquiry’s report was released to secure declassification of the 28 pages, but were rebuffed.

“I distinctly recall that after Bob [Graham] and I were turned down by Bob Mueller at FBI, we both were disappointed and a bit puzzled about ‘why.’ We were under some time constraints to get our Joint Inquiry Report out and we had the option of handing off the material to the 9/11 Commission for further attention – which we did,” Goss said in an email. “I have never had a satisfactory explanation of why this material has not been declassified – though there may be one.”

The 9/11 Commission’s final report later stated that while “Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding … we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization. (This conclusion does not exclude the likelihood that charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship diverted funds to al Qaeda.)”

As FloridaBulldog.org has reported, Saudi King Salman “actively directed” one Saudi charity that court papers filed by 9/11 victims and their families say was “especially important to al Qaeda acquiring the strike capabilities used to launch attacks in the U.S.”

Goss said he hasn’t “pushed as hard as Bob on this, possibly because I do not think there was any official Saudi State complicity in the 9/11 attacks …

Obviously there could have been a rogue ‘official’ or misguided ‘Royal’ in the mix, but even that is uncertain.

“For me the salient point today is just how tolerant are we as a civilized society to allow exploitation of our freedoms by foreigners who deliberately want to undermine those freedoms with systematic violence and malevolent propaganda,” Goss said.

“I am not sure why the Obama Administration thinks the Radical Islamists are rational enough to negotiate with or emotionally stable enough to live peacefully among us. The concept of trying to appease those who have no interest in anything less than a whole new Caliphate is dangerously foolish. Using mosques as forward based platforms to preach and perform violence is a reality that far outstrips my understanding of Freedom of Religion,” Goss said.

Goss called the continued classification of the 28 pages “a minor irritant compared to the idiocy of ‘over-tolerance’ and mishandling of the real threat by the current (and likely next) Administration.”

“If you surmise that I have low confidence the Administration will tell us the truth, you have a high perception,” said Goss. “I guess they could send [National Security Advisor] Susan Rice out to the Sunday Talk Show Circuit to explain it.”

Seven weeks after the end of the massive cleanup at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan in 2002, a legal investigator for the families of 9/11 victims requested a copy of an arrest warrant issued by Interpol for fugitive al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Here’s the reply she got from the Justice Department’s Interpol-U.S. National Central Bureau:

“Release of information about a living person without that person’s consent generally constitutes an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy in violation of the Freedom of Information Act. You must submit an authorization (privacy waiver) signed by Usama bin Laden, consenting to the USNCB’s release to you of any record that it may have pertaining to him.”

Lately, the public focus has been on the 28 blanked-out pages in Congress’s 2002 Joint Inquiry into the attacks regarding “foreign support for the hijackers” – read Saudi Arabia. The pages, withheld by President George W. Bush and kept hidden by President Obama, have been the subject of recent stories in The New Yorker, The New York Times and others. On Capitol Hill, pending bills in the House and Senate seek to open those pages to the public.

Yet hundreds, likely thousands, of significant records about what the 9/11 Commission called “a day of unprecedented shock and suffering in the history of the United States” remain off limits in whole or significant part. The result: an incomplete public understanding of events behind the attacks, and a denial of evidence to 9/11 victims still seeking a measure of justice in the courts.

‘LET OUR PEOPLE KNOW’

“Thousands of pages, photographs and tangible evidence have been withheld, much of which from my personal knowledge has nothing to do with keeping America safer but rather protects incompetence or relations with perfidious foreign governments,” said former Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who co-chaired Congress’s Joint Inquiry into the attacks and helped write the 28 pages.

Bob Graham

“The United States has paid a high price in justice to injured Americans, national security and confidence in government by this secrecy. It is time to let our people know,” Graham said.

Many hidden 9/11 records are years, even decades old. But some like the classified files and memoranda of the FBI’s secretive 9/11 Review Commission were produced in 2014 and 2015.

The Review Commission, charged with investigating the FBI’s performance and evaluating new information about the attacks, went out of business in March after issuing a 127-page report. The FBI has yet to release any other commission material – transcripts, memos and the like – sought in a Freedom of Information request filed by FloridaBulldog.org in April.

Perhaps the largest untapped source of information about events leading up to 9/11 is the raw intelligence files about al Qaeda and terrorist threats gathered by the eavesdropping National Security Agency.

Found in that limited time, and noted in the commission’s report, was “strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al-Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers…We believe this topic requires future investigation by the U.S. government.”

“There’s a massive amount of information,” Shenon said in an interview last week. “That’s always been on the top of my list of documents I’d like to see.”

Suppressed records are plentiful and easy to locate in the reports of the Joint Inquiry and the footnotes of the follow-up 9/11 Commission. Aside from the notorious 28 pages, the Joint Inquiry’s report contains numerous other blanked-out parts, including six heavily censored pages regarding covert action ordered against bin Laden by President Clinton.

The National Archives manages the 9/11 Commission’s files and maintains an online list of about 1,200 fact-finding interviews, nearly 200 of which the public cannot access because they are classified. Hundreds more released documents have redactions ranging from minimal to heavy.

911datasets.org, a group that makes available raw information obtained by 9/11 researchers, says the National Archives has released about a third of the commission’s files. Many records within those files are nevertheless withheld citing national security.

‘NO EVIDENCE’ AGAINST SAUDI GOVERNMENT

The 9/11 Commission reported finding “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually” had funded al Qaeda. The official veil of secrecy over its records, however, continues to obscure how it reached that controversial conclusion.

Hidden from public view are commission interviews with White House staff, FBI agents, CIA employees and officials with other agencies including the Defense Intelligence Agency, State Department, Treasury Department and Federal Aviation Administration. Also secret: interviews with government officials from Great Britain, Canada, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.

From left to right: Dick Cheney, Prince Bandar, Condoleezza Rice, and George W. Bush, on the Truman Balcony of the White House on September 13, 2001. [Source: White House via HistoryCommons.org]

One intriguing 2003 interview was with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. who met with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at the White House two days after 15 of his countrymen helped carry out passenger jet attacks on New York and Washington.

Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa, made payments to a man the Joint Inquiry identified as a “Saudi extremist and a bin Laden supporter.” The man, Osama Bassnan, also apparently had contact with 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Midhar, who were aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it slammed into the Pentagon.

Time Magazine reported that from January 1999 to May 2002 the princess made monthly payments of $2,000 to Bassnan’s wife, who was said to suffer from a severe thyroid condition. The payments totaled as much as $73,000, The New Yorker reported last year.

Key documents by the CIA and the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control relating to terrorist financing are also under wraps.

For example, while representing 9/11 victims, New York’s Kreindler & Kreindler law firm filed a Freedom of Information request for a copy of a May 2000 memo about a meeting OFAC officials had with two of Osama bin Laden’s half-brothers, as well as a subsequent letter about the meeting from the Saudi Binladin Group, the large construction conglomerate founded by Osama bin Laden’s father. Both documents are cited in the 9/11 Commission’s report.

OFAC denied the 2009 request saying, among other things, that the release of those records would constitute “a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” presumably of the bin Ladens.

OFAC also asserted personal privacy and national security considerations in 2006 when refusing to release nearly 700 pages of records about the International Islamic Relief Organization, a Saudi charity whose branches in Indonesia and the Philippines were specially designated by OFAC as terrorist entities for funding al Qaeda.

Another 600 OFAC pages were likewise withheld about the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Saudi charity designated by the Treasury Department in 2008 for having provided “financial and material support” for al Qaeda.

IMMUNIZING FINANCIERS OF TERRORISM?

“The wholesale redaction of any relevant detail is a problem we’ve seen across the board when we’ve asked for documents that address specific details of Saudi-based support for al Qaeda in the pre-9/11 era,” said Sean P. Carter, a victim’s attorney with Philadelphia’s Cozen O’Connor law firm. “At the end of the day this is immunizing those people from the consequences of their actions.”

Al Rajhi Bank headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The CIA took a different tack in its July 2013 response to a FOIA request by another plaintiff’s lawyer seeking intelligence reports about Saudi Arabia’s al Rajhi Bank that were cited in a Wall Street Journal story, “U.S. Tracks Saudi Bank Favored by Extremists.”

CIA documents cited prominently in the 9/11 Commission Report and requested by plaintiff’s lawyers have been released in recent years, often with heavy redactions and assertions that the information was exempt by presidential directive or U.S. law.

“Identifying Al-Qa’aida’s Donors and Fundraisers: a Status Report” February 2002. Seven pages. Donors names are blanked out, but the report says they include “wealthy individuals in the Arabian Peninsula” and others who channeled “money intended for terrorist-related activities through middlemen” to hide their involvement.

In June, the CIA released a 10-year-old report by the agency’s Inspector General regarding criticism leveled by the Joint Inquiry. The 490-page report is riddled with redactions, including nearly all of a 29-page section titled “Issues Relating to Saudi Arabia.” A sentence that remains states that the CIA found no “reliable reporting confirming Saudi government involvement with and financial support for terrorism prior to 9/11.”

The National Security Archive, a private research group based at Washington’s Georgetown University, has identified key 9/11 information that remains classified.

“Hundreds of cited reports and cables remain classified, including all interrogation materials such as the 47 reports from CIA interrogations of [alleged 9/11 mastermind] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” the group’s website says.

THE FBI’S MANY CLASSIFIED RECORDS

The FBI posts 72 documents about the 9/11 Commission on its website. Many contain extensive redactions and none involve allegations of Saudi financing for terrorists, the most controversial aspect of the 9/11 case.

The FBI’s sprawling 9/11 investigation, code-named PENTTBOMB, was the largest in its history. More than half of its agents worked the case, following more than half-a-million investigative leads, the FBI has said.

U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch

How many documents is that?

The FBI’s Tampa field office alone holds 80,000 classified pages in its 9/11 file, according to papers filed by the Justice Department in ongoing Freedom of Information litigation brought by FloridaBulldog.org.

The records include details of a once-secret FBI investigation of a Saudi family with apparent ties to the 9/11 hijackers who gained attention after they abruptly moved out of their Sarasota area home two weeks before the attacks, leaving behind their cars, clothes, furniture and other belongings. FloridaBulldog.org working with Anthony Summers, co-author of the 9/11 history “The Eleventh Day,” first reported the story in 2011.

Fort Lauderdale U.S. District Court Judge William J. Zloch is currently reviewing those 80,000 pages for possible public release.

The continuing secrecy about 9/11 has not sat well with the former leaders of the 9/11 Commission.

At an event last year marking the 10th anniversary of the release of its report, former Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton urged transparency, saying he was “surprised and disappointed” to learn that documents remain hidden.

“I assumed, incorrectly, that our records would be public. All of them, everything,” Hamilton said. “I want those documents declassified. I’m embarrassed to be associated with a work product that is secret.”

White House budget director Shaun Donovan called for a “more aggressive strategy” to thwart improper government payments to doctors, hospitals and insurance companies in a previously undisclosed letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell earlier this year.

Government health care programs covering millions of Americans waste billions of tax dollars every year through these “improper” payments, Donovan said in the Feb. 26, 2015 letter. (more…)

The Obama Administration has repeatedly trumpeted its plan to boost the average fuel economy of new cars and light trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by the 2025 model year.

In a 2011 White House news release announcing an agreement with automakers to reach the goal, President Obama called it the “the single most important step we’ve ever taken as a nation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.” By 2025, he said, average fuel economy “will nearly double to almost 55 miles per gallon.” (more…)

Two Florida newspapers have asked a Fort Lauderdale federal judge to deny the Justice Department’s effort to shut down a Freedom of Information lawsuit seeking records from an FBI investigation into apparent terrorist activity in Sarasota shortly before 9/11.

BrowardBulldog.org filed the suit in September 2012 alleging the government was improperly withholding records on the matter. The government, after unexpectedly releasing 31 highly censored pages last spring, argued the court should end the case due to national security considerations and asserted that a “reasonable search” had determined “there are no agency records being improperly withheld.”

Court papers filed Tuesday by attorneys for The Miami Herald and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune say they were intervening “to stress that the outcome of this case is a matter of intense interest to the media and the public generally.” The newspapers also argued that “government officials charged with investigating terrorist connections in our state must also be held fully accountable.”

“The Broward Bulldog has provided this court with ample evidence establishing that the FBI could not have possibly conducted adequate searches in response to its federal Freedom of Information Act request,” said the joint brief filed by Tampa attorneys Carol LoCicero, Rachel Fugate and Mark Caramanica. “The stakes are simply too great to accept as a matter of law the government’s vague, often second hand conclusions as to the adequacy of its document searches.”

The newspapers’ friend-of-the-court brief asks U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch not to be “too quick” to accept an agency’s claim that it conducted “an appropriate search,” citing examples where records that should have been produced were not.

One cited case involves the conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, which sued in 2012 seeking records about the Obama Administration’s alleged coordination with the producers of Zero Dark Thirty, the motion picture about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Allegations had been made that the White House provided the filmmakers with access to highly sensitive national security records in order to burnish President Obama’s reputation prior to the 2012 election.

A judge ordered the CIA to produce records about the matter, “but it was only months later that additional ‘overlooked’ documents were produced that included illuminating correspondence among the White House, the Department of Defense and the CIA suggesting a coordinated effort to provide a heightened level of access to the filmmakers and a desire that the administration be portrayed positively.”

The story reported how, a decade earlier, the FBI had found direct ties between 9/11 hijackers and a young Saudi couple, Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji, who appeared to have hurriedly departed their upscale home in a gated community in the weeks before 9/11 – leaving behind cars, furniture, clothing, a refrigerator full of food and an open safe in the master bedroom.

Anoud al-Hijji is the daughter of the home’s owner, Esam Ghazzawi, a long-time adviser to a senior Saudi prince. Ghazzawi was also a focus of FBI interest after 9/11 when agents sought to lure him back to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia to close the transaction when the home was sold, according to a lawyer for the homeowner’s association.

Agents searched gatehouse logbooks and license plate snapshots and found evidence that vehicles used by the hijackers, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, had visited the home, according to a counterterrorism agent who spoke on condition of anonymity. A sophisticated analysis of incoming and outgoing phone calls to the home also established links to Atta and other terrorists, including Adman Shukrijumah, the agent said.

FBI Director Robert Mueller with wanted poster for Adnan Shukrijumah

Shukrijumah, a former Miramar resident, is currently on the FBI’s “most wanted” list and the State Department is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.

The FBI publicly acknowledged its investigation but said it had found nothing connecting the al-Hijjis to 9/11.

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who chaired Congress’ Joint inquiry into the attacks, has said the FBI never informed Congress or the subsequent 9/11 Commission about its Sarasota investigation.

The story has taken several twists since news of the investigation first broke.

In February 2012, Florida Department of Law Enforcement documents obtained using the state’s public records law showed that in April 2004 Wissam Hammoud, a now imprisoned “international terrorist associate” then under arrest in Hillsborough County, told the FBI that al-Hijji considered Osama bin Laden a “hero” and may have known some of the hijackers who trained at a flight school in Venice, about 10 miles from the al-Hijji residence. Hammoud also told the FBI then that al-Hijji had introduced him to Shukrijumah at a soccer game at a local mosque prior to 9/11. Hammoud confirmed making those statements in an interview.

Al-Hijji was reached in London in 2012 where he worked for Aramco Overseas, the European subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, the state oil company. He told The Telegraph that he knew Hammoud, but denied any involvement with terrorists. He called 9/11 “an awful crime.”

Abdulaziz al-Hijji, right, in Sarasota prior to 9/11 and leaving his London office in 2012 Photo in London by Warren Allot for The Telegraph

One year ago, six months after the lawsuit was filed, the FBI suddenly made public 31 redacted pages about its Sarasota investigation. The records flatly contradicted the Bureau’s earlier public statements that it had found no evidence connecting the al-Hijjis to the hijackers. Instead, the FBI records said the family had “many connections” to “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.”

The declassified documents tied three individuals, with names blanked out, to the Venice flight school where Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi trained. One of those individuals was described as a relative of the al-Hijjis, whose names were also redacted.

Last June, the Justice Department moved to end the lawsuit, citing national security. A senior FBI official told the judge disclosure of certain classified information about the Sarasota Saudis “would reveal current specific targets of the FBI’s national security investigations.”

The FBI did not explain how an investigation that it previously said had found no connection between those Saudis and the 9/11 attacks involved information so secret that its disclosure “could be expected to cause serious damage to national security.”

Anthony Summers is co-author with Robbyn Swan of The Eleventh Day, an account of 9/11 that was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for History.